The App Store is a monopoly: Here's why the EU is correct to investigate Apple
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Pro-consumer behavior almost always looks like anti-publisher behavior.
> For apps and in-app products offered through Google Play, the service fee is equivalent to 30% of the price. You receive 70% of the payment. The remaining 30% goes to the distribution partner and operating fees. [https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...]
But it's easy to argue that many of these just derived their rates from what existing similar store fees were. Epic Game Store tried to disrupt this and they're still at it a few years later but for most developers publishing on Steam/GOG nothing changed.
30% of subscriptions on the other hand might not.
Services net sales in 2019 was $46.2B, and the cost of those sales was $16.8B (source 2019 10-K). They dont specifically break out App store vs other services, but as a whole the services section of their business is very, very profitable, according to their accounting. It remains so even if you throw in the entirety of R&D ($16.2B).
When the App Store was launched, Steve Jobs said they plan to run it at break-even, no profit, and for quite a few years that was exactly what they did. Now they are profiting from the App Store and clearly could continue to run it as they do on a lower percentage, but I don't think 10% is that number. If they could run it on 10%, they wouldn't have operated it without profit for the first quite-a-few years at 30%!
Because of the lack of numbers, I'm not sure how long it was before running at break-even ceased to be a thing, though.
They're really not.
Not the only store, period.
There is Android store which has 4 times as many users, and at some point Microsoft had a store but people didn't like it either...
If our country decides to make a rule about how smart phones should be created, sold or operated and Apple doesn’t like it, they can go and do business somewhere else.
https://apb-law.com/understanding-magnuson-moss-act-relates-...
Streaming services can be on iOS platforms without giving Apple a dime.
What if tomorrow they decide bing is the only search engine available on iOS, or iCloud the only storage solution. Would you still be holding the same argument ?
How did that whole government intervention thing work out with respect to Microsoft? 20 years later they still have the same dominance in operating systems and productivity apps. No one cares about browser dominance except for Google.
Most people don't by Window's in a store, it's pre-installed on PCs and Microsoft did, in fact, force computer companies to buy Windows licenses for every PC regardless of what OS it came with and they threatened to pull their licensing entirely for any company that didn't abide.
Ironically, this is not what got them into trouble.
Once I've bought it, it is mine. The entire idea that Apple can do whatever they want on a device that they have already sold is ludicrous.
To many people, the fault you find in the product is the added value that differentiates it from competitors.
You largely had a choice of two products. It sounds like one did what you wanted, and one didn't. You bought the one that didn't and now you're unhappy about it. I don't quite understand that.
It’s pretty clear the only path out of this situation is to rethink antitrust laws in a society where companies have evolved to evade them, and to legislate.
What’s wrong with people wanting Apple and Google to follow some rules?
Having a rule that all smartphones should allow sideloading would not be the end of the world for people who like Apple’s app store. Those people would still have the choice to us it.
Do you also complain that you can’t put gas in a Tesla even though you should have known that it was designed that way?
Did you watch the hearing the other day? Do you really trust those people to regulate tech?
So what I'm really curious about is why is that? Regardless of the legality beyond it, why did you make a choice you're upset with?
Two products is not a huge number. It seems likely that neither product was exactly what they want, and this is just a particular thing they don't like about iPhones.
Most people are “forced” to get internet through their cable company because there often isn’t a choice. How many people have to buy a phone that on average is twice as expensive as the alternative and then complain about it?
Use it as a hammer for all Apple care.
It's just that Apple aren't going to spend their time and money developing software to let you do things they aren't interested in. Why should they?
I said you can do whatever you want.
I didn't say you can require other people to do what you want, like build software features for you.
You can, however, if you figure it out.
They are spending time and money to prevent that. Or you can create an app store as an app and expect Apple to allow your "app store app" to ship in iPhones? The features are already there in the OS, they use them themselves. They dont need to do anything more.. but instead they work to cripple or prevent others from using it.
This is in essence the spirit of a monopoly.
Ok you personally dont mind for whatever reasons, but there a lot of other harms to the society and civil rights in general going on here. And that was the reason countries and laws exists.. To prevent people or companies in position of power to abuse their power.
I disagree I don't think the reason why have countries and laws is so that you can force someone else to support your product when they don't want to.
Imagine if windows crippled Netscape by forcing them to use Internet Explorer engine on Windows?
And this is just one thing Apple are doing that is unbelievable they are getting away with it.
Not letting other browsers use their own JS engine (which is what it means to 'forcing them to use Internet Explorer engine on Windows' in your analogy) is because Apple want to disallow write|execute for people's safety.
Perhaps you're right. Maybe it's entirely coincidental that Apple's policy also prevents owners of Apple devices from using a browser with modern features that would allow web apps to effectively compete with the native apps from which Apple gets a huge cut of the revenue because of its monopoly control over the app store.
Or the real reason, is as it was pointed out in the other comment, is to cripple other browser engines that offer a platform that could actually be competitive with AppleKit's turning their control over the App store (and what people are allowed to access according to their own taste) irrelevant?
And if that's the real reason behind it, its clear the end user best interests are not being taken into account, as in not having access to possible better options according to your own tastes, contrary to what a lot of people in the comments here are trying to make we believe its true.
I respect that you would prefer other stores, but I would prefer a single store, that's all. I don't think I'm entitled to anything. I bought an iPhone with the expectation of a walled garden, but if that changes then I can re-evaluate my phone choice. BigCorp doesn't own me anything.
Also, a second store would affect me. I will have to make a decision on whether to trust a separate store or not use those apps. I'd prefer not to have to make that choice.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/29/apple-ceo-tim-cook-questio...
Were you also against Apple disabling enterprise certificates when Google and Facebook were using it to spy on users - not just their own employees?
What next? Are you going to complain that Apple made it harder for advertisers to track you?
https://9to5google.com/2020/07/13/google-and-microsoft-pwa/
...than on iOS
https://www.cnet.com/news/google-web-app-plans-collide-with-...
Just not on iOS, if they need the "wrong" functionality.
Neil Cybart wrote this in a July 6th newsletter: “Billions of people use Android smartphones. However, the press views Android as so inferior to iOS that it’s not a viable alternative for Apple users. That ends up saying more about the competition failing than Apple users suffering from Apple possessing too much power and success.” I had a hard time believing that when I read it, but maybe it’s true.
It's not just the press: switching to Android would have very negative drawbacks to many Apple users, even if you don't consider it to be strictly inferior. It would be like pointing a sports car owner to a minivan and saying that they should buy that when they complain about their manufacturer removing buttons from the dashboard. (More accurately, assume that the only sports car available was from one manufacturer and you had to move over to the minivan or you have to ride a bike everywhere.)
(a) no smartphone exists that is a perfect fit for my ideal requirements
and
(b) having some smartphone is now almost essential to function normally within society
I would say yes, I absolutely do want the government to intervene. Market competition is obviously not doing the job, and none of us individually is strong enough to force the issue with the suppliers. That is exactly the situation where regulatory intervention is appropriate to protect the little guy from the power of the big guy.
Well I don't know what to say apart from this is incredibly selfish.
You can't find a product suited to your particular esoteric requirements so you want the government to force someone else to perform labour to build the product you want.
Can you see how wacky that sounds when you write it out like that?
I don't think it's selfish to argue that government should protect the little guy from being exploited by the big guy who has much greater power, for each of the numerous little guys affected by a situation. Indeed, that is arguably one of the most important functions of any government.
I would have less of a problem with this if we were discussing some luxury item that people could easily do without. However, the reality is that many organisations -- including government entities at various scales in my country as well as other essential services -- now effectively require the use of certain technologies in order to function as a normal member of society. It is therefore reasonable to ensure that the technologies available are provided on an acceptable basis.
If a supplier doesn't want to play by those rules, they're not forced to perform any labour for me or anyone else here. They're perfectly entitled to simply exit the market instead.
But you can already access these Government services - the apps already work, right? You don't need a third-party-app-store to use them?
So that isn't a reason to change anything.
You want the iPhone to be changed so you can do other things with the iPhone, unrelated to these Government services.
The fundamental point is still that, for practical purposes, many people now have to have a smartphone. There are, for practical purposes, two types of smartphone available. If neither of those meets some reasonable conditions that many people would prefer to have -- for example, retaining control of your own device and data -- then this implies a lack of effective competition in the marketplace. Government regulation is the solution to that problem.
Arguing that people don't have to buy the product isn't helpful. Many people are effectively forced into buying one product or the other.
Arguing that people don't have to buy the Apple product isn't helpful. Buying an Android one instead is worse in other respects.
When you try to give a concrete example I show how that concrete example doesn't make any sense to me.
If the fundamental point doesn't translate to any concrete situations then it's a dud.
> neither of those meets some reasonable conditions that many people would prefer to have -- for example, retaining control of your own device and data
But I don't think these are a reasonable conditions.
And I don't think many people want them - I think the number is probably absolutely tiny.
I think using legislation to force Apple to accomodate the unreasonable and abstract preferences of a tiny number of people from a group that isn't specially protected is morally unjust.
But I won't keep arguing it further as I think we probably just have different morals.
So we can see. That doesn't mean they wouldn't be in the interests of owners of Apple devices, or that Apple shouldn't be prevented from exploiting its dominant position to restrict the market to the detriment of those owners.
I wonder whether you'd be OK with an electricity supplier saying you're only allowed to plug in equipment they have approved and they can change the rules or revoke approvals any time they like. If you don't like it, you can go to the other electricity supplier, who will give you their list of acceptable equipment instead. If you want to use equipment from both lists, don't worry, just buy two houses. And of course no-one makes any equipment that isn't on either list, because there is no possibility you'd ever want to power anything that wasn't approved by at least one electricity supplier.
Or you can buy Car A that goes only to one set of locations, or Car B that goes only to another set. Other locations might be happy to welcome you, but even if they build the roads to reach them, your car will artificially prevent you from driving that way.
If you buy an iPhone and get upset that you can't install your own apps, you're unreasonable.
There's a big difference between the two, and the key difference here is ... Property.
But i like your example because its shows the mindset that the iPhone you bought, is in the end the property of Apple, not really yours, and that you are "fine with it".
But you cannot require that Apple do work to build support for third-party app stores. Property rights do not extend to forcing other people to do labour for you.
If your phone doesn't come with support for third-party stores when you buy it then I don't see how it would be your right to have that feature added.
You and I can't, at least not directly. But governments certainly can, if they deem it in the interest of the citizens they serve.
Tyranny defined. “Do what we tell you to do, it’s ‘for our citizens.’” That’s how you get Australia forcing companies to backdoor encryption.
A more apt analogy is perhaps that you’re a McDonalds franchise owner, and you can’t serve Subway food there.
The problem here is a centralized point of control, that basically controls, or can eventually exercise this control to define in the end how you experience your life in the digital realm.
As the subtraction, or whats left out, will happen before, people wont even notice whats being taken from them.
That's why its hard to compare to anything that happened before, because its unparalleled.
I really think this is a more accurate take than "Apple restricts what you can do to your device therefore you don't really own it." Yes, they restrict what I can do with the device, but yes, I really own it. And bonus: f I decide those restrictions are too much to bear, well, buying a new phone is way easier than buying a new house.
But suppose that they define which cars you need to have to live in that neightborhood? You would start to think that now they are being unreasonable..
The thing is, Apple can change those "ok, now this is unreasonable" things behind your back without you even being aware of it. How can you know that you would want that car that the "owners" of your neighborhood did not allowed that car seller to offer you? (And no, this is not a stretch, remember that your digital life is a whole big dimension of your life, imagine a centralized point of control)
You wont feel as you would if they forced you to a limited set of cars, but there are a lot of damages happening by allowing them to do as they please, and not only about your rights as a owner of the product, because there are developers and other technological, social and political issues happening with those decisions being made like that.
Unfortunately it cant be compared as just a house that you have not full control of it, because in that case it would most "damage" you in the end.
The decisions Apple are making hurting digital and material property rights have broader implications to the society in general.
There are only two pocket computers. And they're both beating people up over protection money.
Moreover, computing used to be free like water. These companies locked it down so you have to go through them.
Imagine if you had to pay McDonald's to open your own restaurant.
Imagine if every restaurant in the US had to do so.
Imagine if McDonald's gathered data about your customers.
Imagine if McDonald's saw what worked about your restaurant, copied it, and then hid yours from consumers.
It's not okay. This is one of the worst abuses of the American consumer and small businesses in history.
Edit: I think we're all being downvoted by corporate brigading. Every one of my posts is being downvoted. I made a compelling and respectful argument, and note the lack of rebuttals.
There are thousands of powerful smartphones on the market, from many different companies and even countries.
> It's not okay.
I'm okay with it.
There are only 2 major OS's.
The central question at hand is the App Store monopoly, and your argument was:
> There are thousands of powerful smartphones on the market, from many different companies and even countries.
But that number willfully misrepresents the current state of the market as it pertains to the current discussion because all but one of those powerful smartphones only operate on one other OS, and by extension, one other App Store regime.
Whether this OS duopoly is acceptable is the whole debate.
Of course I know what it means — the argument is way more nuanced than "hurr durr there are 2 and 2 > 1".
Couple things:
1. The argument isn't that it's a monopoly, it's that it's arguably monopsony. The issue is less that users don't have the choice to buy the phone they want with the OS they want, it's that developers/suppliers are unable to access a huge chunk of the market without being forced to pay 30% of earnings.
2. While it's closer to a "duopsony" than a "monopsony", it gets a little more complicated when you look at the level of each regional market. In the US, Apple's market share is closer to 50%.
Maybe it's not anti-competitive for there to be only 2 app buyers on the market, but maybe it is. That's the debate, and it's by no means clear cut.
Google and Apple are a cartel.
They made the world worse than it was for software distribution. It used to be open in the 90's and 00's.
You're being deceptive here. Apple App Store and Google Play Store are what we are talking about. There aren't many other avenues that can reach consumers.
> I'm okay with it.
You're okay with me having to pay hard earned money to Apple and Google? Having to work that much harder? To be unable to afford to lean into scaling? Because that's awful.
Fuck that.
These companies are anti-entrepreneur.
I'm using your own words - you said 'pocket computers'.
And you can load your own applications onto Android, can't you? So use that!
If you're trying to make the argument that maybe we should change the laws to make monopolies illegal, it would be easier to discuss if you define what the guiding principle is. Are you saying companies shouldn't own more than X% of a market? Companies should comply with a set of practices? etc
Here's why it's difficult when you just use anecdotes. Consider your example, restaurants. Restaurants are a local industry with lower barriers to entry so naturally you have thousands to choose from. Online marketplaces tend to be global marketplaces with very high barriers to entry. So comparing restaurants to the App Store is a stretch at best.
A better example might be a national every day low price store like Walmart. So let's try your examples with them.
Imagine if you had to pay Walmart to open your own store INSIDE Walmart ... sounds reasonable.
Imagine if every store that wanted to open a store in Walmart had to do so ... again, reasonable. Starbucks pays to be inside target, Wells Fargo inside Safeway, etc.
Imagine if Walmart gathered data about your customers. They do, and again reasonable.
Imagine if Walmart saw what worked at your store and copied it and hid yours from your consumers. This happens as well. Consider Equate, Walmart's private brand. Or Safeway select. Basically the same thing.
> Arguably, Apple has monopoly power in the market they built so nothing wrong there.
Apple embraced the web and the internet, then extinguished it as a means of getting software to consumers.
> Online marketplaces tend to be global marketplaces with very high barriers to entry.
This is false. The web is a free for all.
A better analogy for iPhone and Android being marketplaces is x86 and ARM being marketplaces. Can you imagine having to pay to run your code and your commerce on CPUs?
Phones should be utilities.
> A better example might be a national every day low price store like Walmart.
I don't know. There's Target, Home Depot, Lowes, Whole Foods, Kroger, REI, Dick's, CVS, Dollar Tree, Dollar General, ...
Why don't Netflix and DHH try to sell their wares there?
Not sure why this is relevant to EU regulation.
> This is false. The web is a free for all.
Somewhat. The web is a free for all and is part of the high barrier to entry for online marketplaces. I probably should qualify that as a serious online marketplace for third parties.
> Can you imagine having to pay to run your code and your commerce on CPUs?
Sure can. It was called the 90's. I remember paying per cpu/per end user licensing fees to run things on my own cpus.
> Phones should be utilities.
As an opinion, I can't really argue this.
> Target, Home Depot, Lowes, Whole Foods, Kroger, REI, Dick's, CVS, Dollar Tree, Dollar General,
These are great examples that continue to make my point. * almost all have private brands that compete brands they sell * many allow stores in their stores (which they charge for) * they collect data on those stores (within their stores)
BTW, my intent is not to convince you. I normally wouldn't have responded at all, but since you seemed genuinely curious why you weren't seeing responses so I thought I would give you my perspective.
Let say Apple is BMW, and when you buy BMW your gas tank has a proprietary connector that will work only on BP gas stations. You can choose different gas there (different octane number, etc.), but you can't tank at e.g. Statoil.
I admit I probably wouldn't buy such a car myself as I don't see any advantages. I do see advantages to the Apple model - simplicity and cleanliness. If you disagree then you should probably do as I would with the BMW - buy something else instead.
Lets say at some point drivers of GM vehicles buy 60% of the gas sold. Gas stations must agree to use proprietary connectors to service GM cars. Because of GM's market share, the majority of gas stations decide to use GM-only connectors, which then sells more GM cars...
Such a cycle is great for GM but probably not good for consumers if you think competitive markets are pro-consumer. And it affects people who don't even buy GM cars, because it influences what 3rd party business are viable. I think that's a key difference between companies with enormous market share engaging in anti-competitive behavior and companies with minority market share (like BMW) doing it.
As another example, I think it would have been unfortunate if home internet service providers (of which many people have a choice of only one or two, and it's a big hassle to change) became a bottleneck for other types of services such as online streaming (perhaps by charging exorbitant bandwidth costs to competitors). Luckily I think that ship has mostly sailed, and even in the absence of regulation abuses are probably somewhat kept in check by the very real possibility that regulation will happen if things go too far.
I think there's an argument to be made that it would be bad for a duopoly in the mobile OS market (Apple/Google) to lead to a reduced level of competition in app stores, payment processing, and possibly computer software in general (because of the approval process). And even though Apple may not have an absolute majority on market share, the percent of software revenue is probably more important and Apple's share of that is probably quite high.
There's probably reasonable ways to address this too. Maybe by allowing other app stores (that follow the same sandboxing / security rules), which seems to work out fine on platforms like Windows with options like Steam. And maybe they could let Apple continue to require support for a common payment method, but not let them prohibit other payment methods or require that those other payment methods are the same price (when the fees on the other payment methods may be much less than 30%).
If you can force thru a change to allow other app stores on an IDevice, and Apple still refuses to follow thru, then you can say you deserve it.
Wanting a thing is not the same as deserving it. Choice does not exist until you have options.
That said, I’m in favor of opening up other App Stores, so Apple can boot the all crapware and focus on a small number of high-quality, trustable apps, which they can market as such. Apple and the developers could charge a premium for being trusted and consumers would be able trust that they are actually receiving the best-in-class apps for their device.
Then, if consumers want to go to some cut-rate App Store and buy crap apps, that’s on them.
That’s a win-win all around.
What would you be willing to give up so that Apple would support your desired outcome more?
People at Apple choose not to spend their time, money, and energy on supporting third-party app stores.
You can choose to do whatever you want. But you can't force people at Apple to choose to do something.
Apple doesn't need to support third party app stores. Apple actively hinders them.
Do you require that McDonald's will sell you a Pepsi, when McDonald's want to sell you Coca-Cola? Do you demand that you should be allowed to set up a Pepsi store inside a McDonalds?
Granted, they might choose to write some code to manage how these additional stores work, but theres no technical reason I can think of that they would have to.
How would they have to write extra code to support this? They already support 3rd party apps. Your analogies are bad.
...that don't compete with Apple's own.
I get it, everyone wants always more. And maybe there is more room. Many just view it from their own point of view.
If you don't want to give random apps your credit card, don't give it to them. Why do you oppose other people's right to do that, if they need it?
Personally for me, as a developer of applications, I could care less about 30% fee. I find it reasonable. What I DO care about is restrictions on owning the device and users' inability to run any app they need - even if it is not vetted by Apple. In part it is because I happen to live in an authoritarian country which government loves to block apps in the AppStore.
And how would said users receive push notifications for their apps from Signal?
UPD: oh boy, and I forgot to mention that such users would also have to buy Macs - you can't build a 'stupid app' for iOS without XCode, which runs only on Macs that support the latest version of macOS.
The right way, of course, is to allow third party appstores and app sideloading. Just like we have it on macOS - and it doesn't look like someone was made unhappy because he can run Steam and buy Sketch directly from the developer.
Someone besides Apple, of course.
Purchasing an iPhone is an act of collective bargaining by consumers against publishers that otherwise would hoover up their private data. "If you don't like it, you can always live like it's 2004, before smart phones" is not an answer iPhone customers accept.
If they’re forced to open up to 3rd party stores, I hope they can do it in a way that prevents Adobe from running 8 background processes to make sure my license is current and there aren’t any font updates to download and to make Reader launch faster by keeping it in memory all the time, or whatever it is they do with their Creative Cloud client stuff.
I will never understand people's desire to be handcuffed by Apple. Give me control over my own device god damn it.
I can just hope that the EU is successful in stopping all of Apple's trickeries ranging from 2.5mm headset jacks, ports, OS slow downs, mysterious battery underperformance, app store, the list just goes on.
Entirely unrelated, and it's 3.5 mm by the way.
Personally I've only encountered them on a pair of headphones where they're a step up from a soldered on cable, but more annoying than a standard jack would be. It's also recessed really far in with a very narrow twist-lock connector, so isn't compatible with any cables except the special one it comes with.
You want the EU to regulate whether a company wants to put a headphone jack in their devices?
> OS slow downs
iOS has gotten faster over time [1].
> mysterious battery underperformance
It's common knowledge that this was an honest engineering mistake because as a phone ages, the battery cannot support the max voltage of the processor. Apple now lets you enable full performance with the understanding that your phone might shut down on you when you need it most.
> app store
Which we've determined not to be a monopoly as Apple is a minority player in the mobile device space.
> the list just goes on.
So you've suggested 4 things, 3 of which don't apply and 1 of which (headphone jacks) would be gross governmental overreach.
It seems to me that you just want the company to burn and you want the EU to regulate the hell out of everything in your life.
For example, deciding whether I want to put a headphone jack on my next device is my choice, not the EU's choice, and it would be tyrannical and innovation-stifling to let them have a say over something like that.
It is very reasonable for you to just buy something else if you don't like an Apple device, since Apple is not a monopoly in the mobile space. However, neither you nor the government should have the right to force Apple to develop a product you like. Apple does not exist to satisfy your whims.
[1]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/09/ios-13-the-ars-techn...
> So you've suggested 4 things, 3 of which don't apply and 1 of which (headphone jacks) would be gross governmental overreach.
There is precedence for the EU mandating Apple change their hardware practices:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidphelan/2020/02/11/apple-ch...
> So you've suggested 4 things, 3 of which don't apply and 1 of which (headphone jacks) would be gross governmental overreach.
Here's a 5th one:
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/05/29/tile-writes-to-eu-accus...
The second source is Tile complaining about the privacy warnings in iOS 13. It’s laughable. Customers are turning off abusive always-on surveillance thanks to iOS 13 notifications and this is hurting Tile. Working as intended.
The Tile situation is TBD, pending Apple's release of AirTags. Will iOS user location notifications pop up as frequently in Apple's first party Find My app as it does in Tile's app? Stay tuned!
Also, the letter mentions the matter of Apple removing their previous Tile store presence (presumably in favor of AirTags), which is within their power but brings up the matter of Sherlocking. Sure, Sherlocking is legal- but is it ethical? Is it right when Facebook scouts other apps to duplicate it in their app? Is it right when Apple does the same to preexisting apps in its App Store? At the very least, these legal cases- whether you think them prudent or not- bring them before the public for examination and discussion.
However, I’m not really sure that other companies are contextually more honest to consumers in their advertising, or that such standards in communication even exist for the American marketplace. It’s hard to criticize Apple for the details when the bigger story is their great relationship with customers.
I never said so. In any case, I don't need you to tell me what to do.
I vote with my wallet and I don't buy Apple products anymore.
The government does not need to regulate it, the market itself will do it just like it did with Microsoft. On the meantime, I'll let you keep finding excuses for Apple's shady practices.
If you give apps the right not to do things like AppleID they’ll take it and the App Store would be a highly inconsistent experience for people who want to do no thinking about how their device works. There ought to be some middle ground but consumers are the ones who will have their boundaries encroached unless an entity ruthlessly minds the border...
For the degree of opening you leave companies will extract that much concession from your users.
I use macOS instead of Linux for this reason: last time I tried updating the production packages on a Linux box it took me hours to clean up the mess that X11 left behind.
Don’t criticise my walled garden just because you want to experiment with weed salad in your community garden.
Its reasonable to ask for both.
Yes you can avoid the giant mess of 3rd party launchers on Mac, but only by writing off huge swaths of the software market. Want to run Photoshop? You get to have the Creative Cloud client.
The current state of iOS software is that I never have to go into Task Manager and see what junk has inserted itself as a startup item, whether anything will break if I don't want its update/license client running in the background, or worry about whether it really quits when I quit it or tries to stay resident in the system tray.
You can always buy a device that allows you to do those things, after all. It's not like Apple is the only device vendor out there, or even a majority device vendor.
See: a user in China owns the iPhone and wants to run the app.
Apps developer wants a user to run the app.
And only Apple doesn't let it happen, on the device that it doesn't own anymore.
Regarding your argument, "do not buy it", of course I don't buy it! But that doesn't make this position of Apple right, and I'm glad that lawmakers might put an end to this malicious practice.
Returning your argument, if Apple wants to control what users do with the iPhones, perhaps they shouldn't give up their ownership of devices and shouldn't sell them.
Like that time when Epic Games said "We don't want to use the Google Play Store, so if you want to play Fortnite you have to install it from the Fortnite Installer". And then we immediately had this: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/112630336?pli=1
> This vulnerability allows an app on the device to hijack the Fortnite Installer to instead install a fake APK with any permissions that would normally require user disclosure.
If they could switch to Fortnite Installer on iOS I assume they would. Would it have security holes? Would it do other annoying things that the App Store doesn't let them do?
Repeat those questions for a hypothetical Microsoft iOS Store, Google iOS Store, Amazon iOS Store, Steam iOS Store, Ubisoft iOS Store, EA iOS Store, Pokemon GO Installer, Nintendo iOS Store, iOS Minecraft Launcher, and I'd expect to see more security vulnerabilities and/or hostile behaviors that Apple doesn't allow.
It's a tradeoff. I know the current system isn't perfect, but I worry that forcing Apple to allow other stores to do their own thing will be worse in a variety of ways.
Believe it or not I had an Android phone before and decided I like Apple's system better.
If it were my only computing device and I needed to run a bittorrent client I acknowledge it would be a problem, but like I said elsewhere in the comments, it's a trade-off.
I view the dismissals of "secondary app markets will just be like insecure shoddy secondary Android app stores" to be both pessimistic and lacking in imagination at the potential for new businesses and innovation to be created if Apple just gives up a little bit of its dominating power.
Obligatory glance over at Steam goes here.
Apple’s App Store policies also limit 3rd party software’s ability to fuck up my devices in a myriad of ways.
It would be a much safer solution if Apple's operating system limited 3rd party software's ability to do things it shouldn't. Trying to filter malware at the app store level might improve your odds, but it's not a robust, scalable solution to malware and it never has been.
• Steam (Valve)
• Uplay (Ubisoft)
• Origin (EA)
• Epic (Epic)
• Galaxy (CDProjekt)
• LoL Launcher (Riot)
• Battle.net (Blizzard)
• Twitch (Amazon)
• Minecraft Launcher (Mojang)
Probably others I'm missing.
Can't wait to have a whole home screen dedicated to different app stores because each one has a single exclusive game that I wanted to play
I don't want to download a game and find out that it's secretly spinning up a background spyware process to monitor the screenbuffer and sending the screenshots off to god knows where.
Once again, trying to filter malware at the app store level is not a viable strategy for robust, reliable security, and it never has been.
And also makes apps like Tasker impossible, which from my side of the table is too much.
There should be a button somewhere in iOS called "safety belts off" and I should be able to do anything to a device I bought.
Come on, let's be honest this is in the first place in Apple interest, if Apple needs to sell in China then they made sure they handed over Chinese users data to the government, now if they want to sell in EU they would need to also put a bit of effort into it(I have no idea if EU market is smaller but money is money)
Let's suppose that Apple's store is infallible. Well then the availability of other stores won't matter, will it? Apple will approve everything good and reject everything bad and you'll know that anything not in their store is bad and have no reason to ever look at another store even if they exist.
But suppose they're not infallible. They reject something good when they ought not to. Well now you gain something from the other store, because now you have the option to install it anyway. You don't have to -- you only would if the other store has a sufficient reputation for not distributing bad things -- but you could. Or you could still continue to refuse anything not in Apple's store. It only gives you a choice.
And the existence of the choice creates competitive pressure. It makes it in Apple's interest to do a better job for you, because they don't want customers turning to other stores because they've rejected something they shouldn't have, or because they're charging monopoly rents to developers etc. So they spend more resources to reject only what's bad and not what's good. They charge lower fees, so that more money goes to developers and you get better apps. And then even if you still don't want to use the other stores, their existence makes Apple's store better for you.
But first, we know the App store isn't infallible, but it has an incentive to have more false negatives than positives. It is able to correct past mistakes and does do so.
But as far as competitive pressure, that argument is mute as long as there is no way for the "normal" owner/user of a device to evaluate the market. By the time the bad actor is exposed, it is often too late. The other side is that one only has to look at the Play store to see that there are so many copies of original apps that it is obfuscating them. One cannot find the legitimate app. So until most people are able to be informed and evaluate the apps, it isn't in their favor to want alternative stores.
Also, one has a choice, buy or don't buy the device. Apple does not have a majority of sales in phones, not even close. Also, you can side load any softare you want. It's a service that is paid for , but for free it's 7 days per install.
How do you mean? The Play Store and the App Store both have malware:
https://www.wired.com/story/apple-app-store-malware-click-fr...
But the Play Store is a lot less likely to reject things it shouldn't, it doesn't try to extract a percentage of third party revenue from services like Spotify or Netflix, and there are useful and trustworthy third party stores like F-Droid. It's better.
> And lets take this to the brick and mortar model. 30 ish% of the end user price is not a lot, when many products are at least 100% markup.
Brick and mortar stores have expenses for in-town real estate and sales clerks that Apple doesn't, which is where that margin goes. It's unavoidable for that sales model, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing -- and it's the exact reason why online retailers like Amazon have been kicking their butts by cutting that margin down. And even they still have significant warehousing and shipping expenses for physical products that the digital products Apple distributes don't.
Margins like that are costs to be eliminated where possible, not excuses to impose the same costs where they don't otherwise even exist.
> It is able to correct past mistakes and does do so.
Right, so can you point me to the best BitTorrent app in Apple's store?
> But as far as competitive pressure, that argument is mute as long as there is no way for the "normal" owner/user of a device to evaluate the market.
If this were true then it wouldn't do you any good because then people would have no way to know not to buy an Android phone and enable a shady Russian app store full of malware. Fortunately it isn't (and people doing that is quite uncommon), because we have all the normal mechanisms to determine whether a store is trustworthy -- the reputation of the store operator, third party reviews, opinions from savvy relatives or your company's IT staff etc. And the store itself is still curated by the operator, so you only have to do this for the store operator when enabling one, not every individual app. And you would still have the option to use none but Apple's, if you like.
> The other side is that one only has to look at the Play store to see that there are so many copies of original apps that it is obfuscating them. One cannot find the legitimate app.
So the Play Store doesn't always do a great job. This is a pretty good argument that the level of competition there is pretty weak too -- other stores exist but not many people use them. Still, what stops Apple from doing better than that, competition or not? There is no consumer demand or competitive pressure to approve duplicate garbage apps that nobody actually wants, and Google only does it out of laziness.
> So until most people are able to be informed and evaluate the apps, it isn't in their favor to want alternative stores.
They still wouldn't be evaluating the other apps, only the other stores. It might be reasonable to consider F-Droid (and therefore the apps it distributes) trustworthy but not some store nobody has ever heard of operated by anonymous second world foreign nationals.
> Also, one has a choice, buy or don't buy the device.
That isn't a choice, it's more than one choice, anti-competitively required to be made together. I could want to use iOS on Apple hardware but install an app which is only in the Play Store, and that choice doesn't currently exist.
> Also, you can side load any softare you want. It's a service that is paid for , but for free it's 7 days per install.
This is obviously not a viable alternative or your entire premise would disintegrate because it would be a vector for malware, and then what's the point of excluding other app stores?
> given that I want to use and pay for a piece of software, I would rather pay through Apple
and you're saying
> if you want to pay through Apple, then don't use and pay for the piece of software
Meanwhile other people may choose to do something else, e.g. because they would rather that more of what they pay go to the developer (where it's plausible that it be used to improve the software) than to Apple (which can't productively use any more money than it already has). And who are you or Apple to get in the way of this transaction between two independent and consenting third parties?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_P....
Would you still support Apple's position if, say, Apple would roll out update to iOS with new EULA, which would require you to give up your firstborn son for a Satan sacrifice?
Of course, you can refuse, but the device that you supposedly "own" would effectively stop functioning (obsoleted iOS devices lose their usefulness very fast: try doing anything with iPhone 5).
I would prefer paying for Netflix right from the iPhone. It would be great to have torrent apps (they have legitimate use-cases). I would love to run qemu on my powerful iPad Pro.
Apple does not allow any of that.
You can go to https://netflix.com
You can also buy an Android phone like 85% of the rest of the world.
There are arguments to be made -- and they're made in these comments -- that the App Store is a net benefit for consumers, but it is really, really hard to make the case that users somehow benefit from this.
Android has the freedom of other app stores, but in practice very few even bother
As a fahter, the Apple App Store too is the only place I give my children access too. They started with Android phones but after I noticed the apps which are present in the Google Play Store we went on to switch to iOS. Passing on our used devices to our kids.
Google could have done amazing things, abd so could Microsoft. But both took a different parh. I am not a Apple fanboy, I fact I am very critical about them. Yet its simply the best ecosystem for normal consumers.
That's what the anti-monopoly is about. Frequently, apples 'pro consumer behavior' is demonstrably false, both from their hardware to their software. It's about making you artificially pay more for less and creating a culture of privledged users that mistake revocation of freedom as 'design' because they have the money to ignore reality.
Apple deserves any anti-monopoly actions it gets.
Pro-consumer vs anti-publisher is a false equivalence. This is not a zero-sum game, not at all.
And when developers are forced to support all 5 big ones?
And when any benefit of a reduction in fees is completely lost because of the requirement to support all 5 stores?
If the remedy for Apple picking winners is more stores, then it just means all of the big players will get to pick winners.
There is absolutely nothing whatsoever that is pro consumer about having Google, Amazon, and Facebook be able to run iOS app stores.
It will just raise costs for developers and harm consumers that way.
It will lead to exclusives just as we have in the online streaming world, so consumers are forced to deal with all of them.
That is a big assumption. Who is the forcing agent here you are positing? The whole point of making app stores a multiagent game is to reduce the leverage of one to force things on developers and consumers.
> If the remedy for Apple picking winners is more stores, then it just means all of the big players will get to pick winners.
For this to happen as bad as today a) they all will need to see a benefit in picking winners b) they all will need to pick precisely the same winners.
The whole point of competition is giving power back to the end users (both app consumers and developers) in the form of choice. Any downside you mention is a competitive advantage first and app stores will have to synchronize hard and tight to forgo that to build a cartel against the users and developers (mind you they would also need to build precisely the same products with nothing to differentiate). And at its worst they still wouldn’t be worse than today’s single monopoly.
If this is true, then they will be forced to support any store that has 15% of the market or be worse of than they are today.
Some of the stores will just be bargain basement garbage with nasty policies and perhaps no less than 30% commission, but will have market power because they are owned by Facebook or google.
It will absolutely be worse than today’s monopoly.
If things are made even worse for developers, consumers will not benefit.
It’s true that there will be more ‘choices’ that everyone will be forced to make
But better software won’t be one.
If they were so pro-consumer, why do they allow spyware such as Tiktok to exist on their platform at all?
Instead Apple had implemented the most stringent, pro-privacy features and polices on any platform bar none.
Tiktok grabs your IMEI number, amongst numerous other things and sends them back to the mother ship.
Not saying that other platforms don't collect data, but Tiktok is known for being a whole other level spyware. If Apple was truly trying to protect consumers, there's no way it would allow it.
Maybe I misunderstand you but the quick search[0] I did on Google says Apple iOS API doesn't allow programmer to fetch IMEI number. Did TikTok find a way to circumvent this and get the IMEI?
[0] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41278494/how-to-get-imei...
[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19927160/finding-imei-nu...
There is no ability to get the IMEI on iOS.
Somehow grabbing your IMEI is "whole other level of spyware" than Facebook, who had an app that was analyzing all the traffic sent through your phone.
So if I were you I would not use any app or search engine. Just to be on the safe side.
What I actually do is: minimise the number of apps installed, run a pihole to misroute unwanted traffic, run a VPN tunnel between home and a VPS that I manage myself for location masking and additional egress filtering, install a nonmonetized content blocker for which the source code is available (and run in advanced mode, with assets manually unblocked only by need), and use DuckDuckGo as my search engine.
Neither MixPanel nor GA are in my good books, and if a website requires such spyware to load before it functions, I abandon it.
What's more, I don't allow anything of the sort to be installed on my own services. The only third-party assets permitted are the card-capture fields from our payment gateway.
That only affects the developer, not the consumer. What does the consumer care about who gets paid the fees.
I keep seeing the App Store framed as a consumer issue rather than a developer one when it's not. The App Store is no question pro-consumer especially when you consider the fact that the "open" web has essentially devolved into using every available toolkit to track users across the web.
I'm not at all interested in giving Facebook yet another platform where they can run amok with native hardware. I'm not interested in cleaning off Bonzai Buddy off my parents and friends phones.
I care if it means the applications are ~40% more expensive than need be.
Most markets offer a variety of tradeoffs in price vs. quality. Consumers rarely pick the cheapest product. If Apple's app store is superior, they will have no problem in justifying their 30%.
It seems paternalistic to suggest that consumers are too dumb to make an App Store decision on their own.
We have decades of viruses, malware, ransomware, and toolbars on Windows PCs that prove that the average consumer isn’t that technologically savvy.
I’m not saying Macs are immune in anyway to the same exploits. It’s just that not enough people care to create malware on the Mac to make it that big of a deal.
[1] Don't google it. I made it up.
This is a recurring theme here on HN. The fundamental dilemma is whether or not it is a monopoly. The article is arguing that it is.
I don't even know why people are getting hung up on this monopoly thing. You can make a perfectly valid argument against Apple's 30% cut or their overly restrictive App Store policies regardless of whether they have a monopoly or not. Those arguments stand up on their own.
No one is talking about taking away your choice of keep using the Apple appstore. It is ok to keep using Apple, if you prefer so. We wan't choices, we don't want to remove your choice.
It seems like you want to remove that choice.
The idea that more choices is always better is just ideology.
It is quite obviously possible to move from a situation in which there is no choice and where there are some problems, to a situation where there are multiple choices and none of them are as good as the be no-choice case.
I do think there are problems with Apple’s store.
I think law may be needed.
I don’t think antitrust law forcing ‘competition’ has any likelihood of solving the problems.
If we think there are rights vendors should have over stores - e.g. the right to describe their product however they like, we should establish that in law for all stores.
If we want to use law to force our cooperations to limit the practices they can use in other countries as a way to put pressure on other political systems, those are called sanctions. I’m fine with those being applied if our government decides to apply them.
Again, nothing to do with anti-trust.
The choice of not choosing? The more you guys explain, the less I understand.
You want Apple to prohibit the apps you use from being allowed to tell you about alternative payment options?
I agree that there is a problem with them not allowing different descriptions in different countries, and I agree that they should add this feature to the store.
I wouldn’t have a problem with this being litigated on its own merits. I can see potential legal arguments.
I don’t see what this has to do with antitrust or the rest of the claims, which just seem like a tortured way to introduce an ethical dimension to the argument.
No proposed antitrust remedy has anything to do with challenging authoritarian regimens. If anything the remedies would make the situation worse.
One obvious pathological outcome is that if Apple is forced to create infrastructure to allow multiple stores, every authoritarian state will trivially mandate the installation of a state run store app, with all manner of tracking, privacy abuses, etc., even the ones which had previously had no leverage over Apple.
What's more, Apple doesn't prevent those users entering payment card details into websites they reach by other means; this protection is patchy at best. Nor does it prevent apps using psychological tricks to maximise their revenue through the platform itself, e.g. as with many gambling and gaming apps.
So with the best will in the world I can't see that this security angle justifies the anti-competitive behaviour.
I'll also observe that in most card schemes, account holders aren't liable for fraudulent transactions. Although I would concede that many scams aren't technically fraudulent (merely egregious, unfair, and deceptive), and that naive users often don't understand their rights or how to assert them.
Clearly a browser that didn’t let you enter text would have been unacceptable and the iPhone would have failed as a product.
On the other hand, it’s clear that Apple does actually see this as a serious problem, which is why ApplePay for the web exists, and I know quite a few people who feel far safer with websites that use it.
The argument that Apple hasn’t yet made the web safe for their users even though they are working on it, therefore they should abandon the safety have managed to achieved on the store doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
The web angle is simply demonstrating by contrast that the claim these hardline rules exist for online safety is horse shit. If they were prepared to irrevocably cripple one functional area for safety’s sake, why not another?
The answer is, because that was never the goal.
These rules are simply the protectionist use of market power, and by obliging other vendors to mislead consumers, become an abuse of market power.
Its not just about being a monopoly in the economical sense, which is bad per-se, but to let a private company to control what you have access or not based on particular moral, political views.
To forbid you to access technology that can compete with what they offer on the basis of "security".
If you do not get it, they control the only app store allowed where they also control what you can or cannot access to. You are implying they are good actors somehow that are doing all this thinking on you, while in reality they will do whatever they can to maximize their profits, and as long as people like you are fine with it, nothing will change.
Your current government might yet be democratic enough as this can not YET represent a threat to your civil rights or the ones you love, but things changes constantly. (Who could have predicted that the 30's Weimar Republic Germany would fall like that?)
Once your government do not respect civil rights anymore the way it should, a private company with this amount of control on your digital life can represent a big threat that unlike in the past, would be pretty hard to get rid of.
What about the concept of digital property? Should you have choices? Can a private company bar your choices? Can a private company own the things that were bought by you and are in a phone that you have pay for?
Imagine if after having bought a vehicle, Wolkswagen could tell you who can you transport: "We dont allow dogs in OUR cars".
Now imagine someone saying: "I like what Wolkswagen do, its for my safety, dogs will damage my car".. "Just buy a Mercedes then!"
Or what if Wolkswagen did also sell vehicle parts, and even if you know there are pieces for your cars that are better or cheap, you wouldnt be able to buy them because the stores would be closed for you.
But then you would say: "But apple dont bar me from buying apps, i have choices.." and its a illusion of choice, because the apps were not even allowed to enter the store in the first place.
So there's a real danger into letting any private company to choose things for you before you are able to choose them.
We should have by now a good legislation about digital rights, digital property, etc, that could regulate this source of thing.
Because as i've witnessed here in the comments, you cannot let people on their own, because they can be emotionally manipulated into want things that will harm them and their rights in the long run.
It should not be just about being good for you at this particular moment, we should always take into account the collective and social implications of our choices.
Yes. Americans fully support their money going towards 2 trillion dollar companies as long as their device works well and they can upgrade to the fastest model every 2-4 years.
These apps track your location (both sensor and geoip based) over time, and aggregate and sell that data, along with other user data they glean.
But so far we only got:
EA, UBISOFT, GOG, STEAM, epic and windows store.
PayPal comes to mind.
The iPhone has been pretty good for security / privacy as well - I remember an article that made the front page here about how an accidental usage of the phone's GPS was still stopped when not allowed in the user's settings, and still triggered the location use icon in the status bar.
Much like how Standard Oil actually lowered oil prices while it dominated the market -- sometimes, a monopoly is benign or even benevolent towards consumers. Meanwhile Amazon is an example of a more predatory organization, as evidenced by some of Bezos's responses in the recent congressional hearing.
Monopolies like Amazon should be torn down for the consumer. Monopolies like Apple should only be torn down if they are using their market dominance to extinguish competition that would otherwise force them to improve.
Do you think most consumers would choose to pay 20~30% more for that convenience if they were informed of that choice? And isn't it anti-consumer to deny them this information?
we already know what a market without a mandatory App Store looks like because it is like that for the Mac. I still prefer buying apps through Apple’s store. Due to safety, ease of use etc. But I am happy alternatives exist when I need them.
They could follow a similar model for iPhone where non-Apple stores have to be enabled specifically with a security warning.
I was not able to find anything.
The hypothetical lawsuits you describe don't seem very likely to succeed. No doubt a few people will complain, and then they'll discover the hard way that there is no technological cure for carelessness and whatever other platform they go to next will similarly be compromised if they are similarly careless about what they install on their equipment.
Recall also how Apple forced out Tumblr, a blog reader app (simply a window to UGC) on iOS because they didn’t like the UGC.
(And do not forget third party push-notifications, iOS devices are next to useless without them)
The manufacturer of the device is within their rights to ship the software/hardware experience they want it to have.
If you do not like it, then there is no obligation for you to buy said device.
You are not entitled to make the device manufacturer pour time and effort into developing support for features like this. It's quite simple - if you don't like the ecosystem, move on.
This argument you make is actually done to the death. If you don't like Jenko's oil (ever read "The Godfather"?), you may just not buy it. It is a monopoly, and it hurts consumers.
I'm actually very surprised that this freedom-loving public here on HN is so happy be restricted by their shiny digital handcuffs. Good that EU and US lawmakers are finally waking up to this abuse.
Apple is a minority player in the mobile device space. If you don't want to use an Apple device no one is making you. It will not impact your daily life in any meaningful way whatsoever.
> I'm actually very surprised that this freedom-loving public here on HN is so happy be restricted by their shiny digital handcuffs.
I'm actually very surprised that this freedom-loving public here on HN is so happy let governments force private entities to do anything they want under the thinly-veiled guise of antitrust.
I don't want Apple and Google taking 30% of my profit. How hard is it as a startup to yield that much of your profit margin for such a stupid reason?
We regressed hard core since the 90s. Distribution was free. The web platform is accessible to anyone without an account or membership fee.
Anyone used to be able to write hardware drivers and innovate to the fullest extent with hardware, to get it to do whatever. Now you have to follow the distributor product roadmap and sanctioned API.
Google and Apple own compute. How the fuck did we let that happen?
The government needs to push these entities aside to ensure further innovation can continue.
Comparing against consoles like Nintendo, Sega, and Xbox back then, it was definitely an improvement. No NDAs, no exorbitant upfront costs for dev hardware, no massive take by your publisher. 30% was not much compared to all that, where it likely would have been the other way around (you get 30 [if that], "they" get 70). Today, it does feel steep, and could use another realignment, but "the good old days" weren't exactly that.
Apple is one supplier out of many in the mobile device space. “iPhone users” do not constitute an industry any more than “Windows Store users.”
By your logic I could just divide every service and every industry over and over, until everything happens to be a monopoly over some small uniform subset of users.
HN is a monopoly over HN users! Nike is a monopoly over people in the Nike store! Whole Foods is a monopoly over people visiting grocery stores at this Whole Foods address! Government, please control and regulate all of these out of existence!
This is the same logic people use to block modification of movies, music, books, video games, etc.
"The artist wants you to experience their art a specific way and the ability to [censor profanity/add zombies/change the ending/remix it] wrests control from the creator and allows people experience their art in a way they didn't intend, which is bad"
Curiously though, these people never mention altering food as destroying the experience the chef wanted them to have. For some reason consumers are allowed to have food preferences that modify art, but not preferences that modify other types of art.
And you would also hope the food doesn't come inside a bullet-proof glass bubble with a robotic arm as the only interface between you and the food to ensure you eat it exactly the way the chef intended.
And furthermore you would hope breaking the bullet-proof glass bubble so you can feed yourself and pick out the mushrooms won't cause the chef to send lawyers after you (especially if you teach others how to).
So although you're presenting an analogy intended to be absurd, I think it's not far from how the normal non-tech world works, in terms of controlling your experience.
Exactly. As much as a car manufacturer shouldn't force you to buy only their gas, oil, tires or batteries.
That would be like telling me that if I don't like the Honda Accord I can buy a pickup truck.
They are different things and are not substitutes for each other.
Android is not a substitute for iOS.
Regardless they compete in the same market, and Android dominates. You have a choice, and Apple is not a monopoly.
Just because Apple doesn't make the product you want doesn't give you the right to compel them to do so.
In light of that reality, the duopoly of Apple and Google are effectively public utilities. They can no longer be considered solely as providers of discretionary consumer goods, and should be subject to additional scrutiny and regulation beyond that applied to ordinary commodity manufacturers.
If you support Apple and Google having locked down authoritative control over the code run on their devices, then you support the Great Firewall.
The only choice of a free and open society, and one mindful of the great benefit of open source and open platforms, is to remove these companies from executive control of mobile platforms. They must become free and open, just like the web.
They're sucking all of the air out of the room. It kills freedom, diversity, and progress. It's rent-seeking.
I'm not interested in Facebook, TikTok, or the next VC social media company, getting native, unfettered access to hardware on my phone or anyone around me where they would be free to run the GPS 24/7. That's the reality of the "open web" today.
It's pretty great afaict.
> One of the greatest abusers of the open web is Facebook who tracks users on almost every site and infringes on the privacy of everyone despite whether of not you hold an account.
Another area where we should exercise legislative action to protect Americans.
> I'm not interested in Facebook, TikTok, or the next VC social media company, getting native, unfettered access to hardware on my phone
You're ignoring the great strides we've made, and continue to make, in sandboxing.
I'd rather these developments happen out in the open, too.
And guess what? I don’t have to use Comcast.
Pretending everyone has that choice not to.
I can't imagine calling up Netflix and attempting to sign up via telephone is feasible, nor is explaining to the average consumer the price is different because they're on wifi instead of data (and only their wifi, or select locations that use Comcast).
You're one of the lucky ones.
On ios you can't.
Apple should be able to do this - but they shouldn't be able to do it without those companies being able to represent themselves independently, through another app store.
I dont think they should. They should only do enough to comply with the law. eg. child pornography
Each human being has its own moral standards and should be allowed to choose and not let others choose for them, unless as stated before, its considered illegal.
Also: you have any UGC in your app? Too bad, you'll have to hire a team of moderators to enforce Apple's rules because won't someone think of the children.
In fact, there was a business in US that did just that. Hollywood's Studio System. Movie studios were vertically integrated with theater chains, and you could only see Paramount or MGM movies in the theaters that that owned. And you know what? Customers were really unhappy, because studios made all kinds of bad tricks like forcing to buy a week pass to see just one movie. Of course, you could refuse to watch other 15 crap movies that were bundled with High Noon, or, like Apple defenders here say, go watch some other movie.
I imagined some arguments that some HN commenters could make:
"It's not a monopoly if you can watch other movies in other theaters"
"Paramount movie chain is just 15% of total number of theaters"
"They made this movie and they should decide how you are allowed to see it"
It all ended with an court decision [1] that ended this monopoly abuse.
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_P....
Sorry folks, that's not how Sherman Act works. So long as there are enough movie theaters in town it's not a "monopoly", and a non-existent monopoly cannot be abused.
The US congress could, of course, rewrite the law (as they did to pass the Sherman Act in the first place), but until such day Apple is not a monopoly in the US.
Additionally, the network/ecosystem effects might make it such that you are really disincentivized to switch.
- For a lot of people, the idea that they would show up as a "green bubble" means they will never consider moving off of Apple - If you've purchased a lot of apps that you will now lose, you're not going to just move off of Apple
If you don't like a movie theater chain, you just go to another one, or don't go to the movies. Not having a phone isn't a realistic option for most people, and neither is switching (this applies in the Google -> Apple direction as well).
People are very narrowly focused on whether Apple (or Google) are monopolies, and the fact is that you can have very imperfect competition[1] in a market that can seriously harm consumers, without anyone being a monopoly.
While you’re aboard you can only purchase food, drink and entertainment from the cruise company. I don’t think a cruise ship would ever allow competing companies to provide those services.
I’m personally a little mixed on the App Store. I don’t a have fundamental issue with the App Store model, and as an Apple customer I personally see it’s limitations as an advantage.
However I do agree that Apple using its App Store to harm competitors in other industries, like Spotify and Netflix, as very harmful. Although I don’t know how fix that without fundamentally changing the App Store, or banning Apple from competing with App Store services like Spotify and Netflix.
Spotify whined for years that they couldn’t stream music to the Apple Watch or download music to the Watch. Apple allowed third party integration over a year ago. Pandora added the feature - Spotify didn’t.
Spotify also doesn’t allow in app purchases so Apple doesn’t get a cut.
This is how Spotify and Netflix are harmed. They have to pick between funding their competitor, or not providing simple signups and subscriptions on one of the worlds largest computing platforms.
This directly harms either their revenue stream or cost-of-acquisition. Both to the advantage of one of one of their largest competitors who has artificially introduced this barrier.
Also. I can’t sign up for a Netflix subscription on my Roku either.
Nothing is stopping another streaming service from offering a bigger cut to artists (indeed Tide purports to do exactly this).
If Spotify started pushing artist contracts that prevented artists from getting a better deal else where, then they should be regulated. But they don’t, and there’s plenty of artists that don’t sell on Spotify because they don’t like the deal they offer.
Nothing is stopping another streaming service from offering a bigger cut to artists (indeed Tide purports to do exactly this).
A bigger cut of a tiny pie? In the same vein nothing is stopping app developers from ignoring iOS or users from buying iPhones, using Google, FaceBook, or Amazon.
What evidence do you have back this up? There’s every suggestion that Spotify are struggling to defend themselves against artists who demand bigger payments.
Additionally there’s every suggestion that Apple Music now have a larger portion of the market than Spotify, and if it hasn’t happened yet, it will soon.
All of that is ignoring other competitors like Google Music (or YouTube, wherever they’re calling it today) and Amazon Music.
Simply put, your assertion fails on multiple fronts.
So you’re okay with Spotify “defending themselves” against artist who want more of a cut?
It takes 180,000 plays to make minimum wage.
https://help.songtrust.com/knowledge/what-is-the-pay-rate-fo...
Spotify also takes a 30% cut.
Artist are also complaining about Spotify’s payout.
https://www.businessofapps.com/data/spotify-statistics/
It has drawn criticism from recording artists, who complain that it pays too little. Claims to democratize the music industry
Maybe Spotify needs to remember that whole “those in glass houses”.
Actually Apple Music pays artists more per stream than Spotify.
Yes, there’s no god given right to be paid for your art. Just because I put some tones together and throw it on the Internet doesn’t mean I deserve to paid significant amounts of money. Or indeed any money at all.
> Actually Apple Music pays artists more per stream than Spotify.
That only proves my point, competition is driving up payments to artists, the system works. Not only that but Apple Music may soon be the dominant streaming platform, and if they can do that would resorting to anti-competitive behaviour then is show that artists can make a living, and consumers can continue paying ~$7/month for music.
But there is a God given right for software developers to get more than 70%?
Not only that but Apple Music may soon be the dominant streaming platform, and if they can do that would resorting to anti-competitive behaviour then is show that artists can make a living, and consumers can continue paying ~$7/month for music.
How do you propose that Apple becomes more dominant than Spotify worldwide when Apple only has a 15% market share? Are people really signing up for Apple Music on Android or are the few Android users who use Apple Music doing so only as part of a Family Plan where the other member of the household is an iOS user?
That only proves my point, competition is driving up payments to artists, the system works.
It’s only “working” because Apple, Amazon, and Google don’t need for music streaming to be profitable - unlike Spotify. They can operate at break even. Artists aren’t choosing one over the other.
No, but the market clearly values developer time significantly more than artist time.
If you wanna have a debate about the relative worth of people professions to society vs their pay. Then talking about the difference between a sports persons pay and doctors pay tends to make for a better argument.
> How do you propose that Apple becomes more dominant than Spotify worldwide when Apple only has a 15% market share? Are people really signing up for Apple Music on Android or are the few Android users who use Apple Music doing so only as part of a Family Plan where the other member of the household is an iOS user?
Apple own almost 20% of the streaming market to Spotify’s 35% and show no signs of slowing down. Apples hardware market clearly hasn’t been a limitation so far. But again that isn’t a surprise when you consider that core markets for streaming are mostly western. And Apple have very high HW market share there, such as almost 50% of the US mobile market.
> It’s only “working” because Apple, Amazon, and Google don’t need for music streaming to be profitable - unlike Spotify. They can operate at break even. Artists aren’t choosing one over the other.
That just shows that Spotify’s cut isn’t unreasonable, they’re barely making a profit.
Ultimately artists choose to make art, they aren’t forced into. They, like any small business owner, takes a gamble. They trade a stable income for the opportunity to do some they love, and do something that has unbounded upside. If they strike a cord with popular society then they stand to make millions, an opportunity that a software developer earning a salary doesn’t have.
If they don’t like that deal, they get a salaried or wage job like the rest of us.
I started my own business for the reasons above, it didn’t pan out, and now I have a salaried job. But you don’t see me gripping about how someone else should have paid me more to run my business.
Simple fact of the matter is that society just doesn’t value artists that much. Neither Spotify or Apple is gonna change that.
You could say the same about app makers. In fact, I am sure that I made more as “mobile developer” in 2008 working for a company that developed Windows CE apps for field services than most indy app makers make in 2020.
But the positive impact of the pie growing, more people being employed, and cheaper goods is hard to argue with.
How many people are buying apps for the iPhone and not subscriptions that work cross platform or spending money on play to win games?
For example, taking your “If you spend a significant amount on a phone, you're stuck there for a while” as a requirement for ‘not allowed’, Apple could start renting out phones instead of selling them.
They also could stop selling third-party apps, instead opting to buy them from third parties and selling them on to consumers or renting them out, as they already do with Apple Arcade. I think any solution would have to keep that in the ‘not allowed’ category, but it would result in a situation similar to that of IBM, which used to (possibly still does) sell CPU upgrades ‘over the air’, disallowing others to do so, or Tesla, which sells software for their cars that way (and, likely, many other companies). Should those be disallowed, too? If not, why not?
And yes, you don’t need monopolies or cartels to get an imperfect market, but if you don’t have monopolies or cartels, you can’t use existing laws on monopolies or cartels to correct that, so what should you use?
Do you think the EU definition of monopoly is different enough to allow Apple be classified as a monopoly? Please, make your case!
What I know is: Sherman act jurisdiction does not extend into the EU
Apple doesn't have to develop what you want them to develop. But it could be in their interest to avoid being labeled as an abusive monopolistic power. In won't make them any less abusive or monopolistic, but it knocks out some detractors.
Why is it the government’s responsibility to stop you from buying a device that doesn’t fit your needs when you had an option.
Phones are a lot more important than consoles but, if a law doesn’t exist let’s make one that applies to both phones and consoles.
This is our country. If Apple doesn’t like it they can go do business somewhere else.
Did anything productive come out of the dog and pony shoe?
How is the Magic Mouse 2 hurting you in any way?
Basecamp also restricts who can integrate with their platform.
Is it really so outrageous to consider there might be a consolidation of power in a way we haven't dealt with before, seeing Amazon crush partners overnight, or Facebook impacting elections?
The very same HN that longs for the early internet, with web rings and personality, doesn't have a problem with Google scrapping content from pages you would have otherwise visited, further limiting smaller website's revenue opportunity?
For those of you not seeing clear anticompetitive behaviors that warrant discovery -- where is your line?
What would you propose the government do? Force people not to use FB who willingly go to their site? Have the government say what is and is not allowed on their platform.
As far as what I might want to see, since you asked: for one, I would like to see more rigor around the acquisition process to eliminate or even undo some of the consolidation. I won't pretend to understand the details of how or what needs to change, but I am more than open to taking a hard look at things like WhatsApp and Instagram being acquired by Facebook and what kinds of power centralization that enables. I hope smarter people than me will do that research and make intelligible cases so we can all hold evidence-backed positions.
Look at the valuation, never mind the societal impact, of these companies -- data is worth far more than your average consumer realizes, at least once it hits an inflection point, and our laws don't currently reflect that. Maybe they should, maybe they shouldn't. I welcome the discovery, and don't feel like we need to be anywhere near a solution yet.
The point that you missed, since you're being extremely uncharitable, is that rule by government works more often than it doesn't.
Nobody agrees with you here. That's why all of your comments that got any attention are disappearing.
Do I trust the politicians? Maybe not the ones you're describing but read through Elizabeth Warren's proposal around platform utilities:
https://medium.com/@teamwarren/heres-how-we-can-break-up-big...
Maybe you agree, maybe you don't - the point is that it's clearly a well-articulated position. Not all US politicians are idiots, but the loudest ones certainly make it seem that way.
The very first paragraph she used MS as an example of when the government intervened in tech. How did that work out? Microsoft is still one of the five largest companies in tech and still has the same dominance in PC operating systems and productivity apps.
- gun control
- health care
- unemployment
- “The War on Christmas”
- “those evil immigrants who are taking away your jobs”
- banning straws so we stop killing fish
- free college education
The fact is that the only reason $BigTech is $BigTech is because people voluntarily use their products - especially Apple that has a minority market share and charges a premium. Everyone knows how much money they give Apple/Amazon for their products - unlike Facebook and Google.
Most people I know are more than capable to read, learn, and form educated opinions on everything on your list as well as this topic.
We might be at a stalemate here since you won't be convincing me the discovery process into these issues isn't worth it, and I'm not sure I can convince you to not judge an entire nation by its lowest common denominator, be it extreme left or extreme right, which is what I'm drawing from your previous comment.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/244367/top-issues-voters-health...
Where do you think the following issues rank in the list?
Facebook/Google collecting data. Especially in the case of FB where people willingly give it data.
Amazon - effects on small retailers (disclaimer I work at AWS)
Apple -
A) taking a 30% cut when most of the money comes from play to win games.
B) Or that you can’t sign up for subscription services in the app
C) you can’t sideload. People have been fine with buying through iTunes/App Store since 2003.
We know that many people on the right are single issue voters - religion, gun rights , abortion. There are probably many single issue voters on the left. The only one that I can think of is “not Trump”.
The three options you present are a completely different level of granularity, I'm not clear why you're ranking them. No one is a single issue voter down to Apple's 30% cut, that's just a piece being discussed to better understand the larger issue (or lack thereof, if that's your point of view).
The issues that you bring up don’t affect most people. Most people willingly spend their money at Apple and Amazon. People spend more to buy Apple devices despite all of the drawbacks that geeks care about.
Besides that, Apple isn’t raising the ire of conservatives about being “unfair” to them or having a negative effect on the election by liberals.
It's not about the workarounds, those are symptoms and some of the reasons this is a thing in the first place.
The face that sentiment around Facebook is generally negative but most still use it is testiment to the monopolistic powers these discussions are all about. Could people migrate to Twitter or some other social network? Sure, maybe. Are they? No. Why? Everyone thought Facebook was a blip in a string of Friendster, MySpace, etc -- but boy they've had staying power despite the low switching cost we thought we had on the early internet. How is that not worth exploring to the fullest?
We don't actually know if these issues affect most people. What would Amazon be like without their Amazon products crushing their third party partners? What would Facebook be like without WhatsApp and Instagram? What would Apple be like if you could plug your weather app of choice in vs their acquisition and likely destruction of all current iOS weather apps? Will Apple nail the DarkSky integration and make a top notch user experience? Almost certainly -- that's not in question.
All of that has a ripple effect through the economy and right now there's purely discovery happening and I still haven't heard one good reason why this discovery process isn't worthwhile, outside of its lack of effectiveness, from the very people who seem to be against any kind of change.
The weather app has no special significance on iOS. You can delete it. Choose another weather app. Put it in the Notification Center. Add a Siri shortcut for it.
Would the founders of the weather app that Apple bought be better off if Apple had just added the functionality instead of acquiring them?
Would Instagram had grown as fast without FB ad network and social graph? Would the founders be better off if the government had stopped Instagram from buying them?
Apple and other large tech companies have obviously arrived at a dominant position that would trigger these sort of investigations. You could say it's an attack on their success, and it is ironic that: success obviously has to do with it.
What apple and other tech companies have are not natural monopolies so it's not always easy for everyone to understand why anyone could claim they wield monopolistic powers.
But the point of these "platform businesses" is and has always been about gaining quasi-monopolistic strength so you can extract value from the margins of everyone involved in the platform ecosystem.
Is a monopoly illegal or necessarily undesirable to society? It depends on how society sees and regulates it. Depends on what society interprets as a NET win or net loss to itself.
And I can definitely think of several aspects of this state of affairs (handful of platforms sitting at nodes of large chunk of digital economy) that present as triggers for society to question the value of the ongoing monopolistic powers of these companies.
But if anything is to be taken from Google's case with EU, Apple will just pay a headline-grabbing fine and continue doing whatever they are doing.
Forcing companies to build an open ecosystem around every feature is a pretty unprecedented and unworkable concept.
Because only the worst developers believe they are more important than the consumer.
In fact, Apple charges more, so it makes it even more difficult to buy them than an Android phone -- which also has multiple app install options. Why not use that?
So I am forced to use an iPhone. Regulation is necessary in Oligopolys.
You can, on the other hand, support businesses or communities that are.
> If some big app owner like Facebook or AirBnb came out and said "We're only supporting Android now, so please switch phones to use our service" they'd just go out of business. That's the essence of monopolism.
I think that's just called bad decision making, which vendors are completely free to make. There are plenty of apps that are Android only, and I'm sure they fully realize their revenue will be less as a result. There are also plenty of third party game developers making exclusive titles for Playstation or Xbox all the time. They're roughly neck and neck outside of Japan, but in Japan, it's no contest, Playstation is completely dominant. Assuming we ignore Nintendo, would you then suggest that Sony has a monopoly on consoles there? One could claim that if you're a developer in Japan and you don't target Playstation in Japan, you're going to lose. But if the goal is maximum revenue ...that's just bad decision making. If the Xbox market in Japan just isn't coughing up dollars, how is that Sony's problem?
Rather than continuously trying to compare Apple to a monopoly, which it isn't, I think the more effective comparison would be with RAND and FRAND. I don't know what kind of legal hoops would need to be jumped through to make the legal justification work, but it seems like Apple has an essential technology (the App Store), and must be obligated to license it (arguably reflected via the fee it charges), but that is an extant example of government regulation where the fee could be legally managed.
Now, don't get me wrong, as a consumer I do want to _own_ my device and have the freedom to do anything with it, even if I never exercise that freedom. And as a consumer I use my right to vote with my wallet by never purchasing iPhones and explain my decision to anyone that cares to listen. But in no way does that mean that I think what Apple is doing is wrong or illegal nor do I think they should be forced to change their business model because some people think they can have the cake and eat it too.
Just because 2 bad actors exist doesn’t mean we can’t stop them.
If, however, you want to impose the support of other stores on Apple by the means of regulations, you're effectively supporting the use of the government's monopoly of force against a company that is building products that people are happy to pay a premium to buy products from (and therefore are perfectly fine with the app store).
There's a name for this: Crony Capitalism.
Apple made its brand and has a loyal customer base due to the quality of the products it delivers, therefore it's providing what the market wants.
This brand of laissez-faire sentimentalism is very predictable, but it is neither here nor there.
> unless you believe that giving unfair advantages to Apple competitors is acceptable by any standards, and that this would lead to a more efficient market.
Given that Apple's control of its platform comes with forcing of 30% fees on its competitors (such as ProtonMail, the OP), it would be less giving advantages to other competitors, than refusing unfair advantages that Apple itself has exploited and enjoyed under the current state of affairs.
> Apple made its brand and has a loyal customer base due to the quality of the products it delivers, therefore it's providing what the market wants.
Then it should rest its laurels on the quality of its products and not on restrictive anti-competitive behavior levied upon its competitors. After all the App Store would be nothing without 3rd party developers, and the world in which Steve Jobs had chosen to never open up the platform to such developers would be a much barer one indeed.
I mean, i thought everyone agreed across the political spectrum that what China is doing in Hong-kong is bad. Reading this thread, i stand corrected.
On the other hand, are you saying that because of your ideas on how the world should run that contract is invalid and that Apple should be forced to change it retroactively, despite the fact they are not causing harm to anyone?
China invading Hong Kong is an aggression, for sure, but so is the EU interference in the free market and private contracts under whatever justification.
I would have thought that is obvious to be honest.
In fact, the vast majority of people get something other than an iPhone.
Not sure how you equate that with a monopoly.
So, not only can you can only use Apple's payment methods, but you have to lie (by omission) to consumers about their options.
This is the market distortion of the App Store.
The rules only oblige app vendors if they agree with that contract. Users also only engage in doing business with Apple on a voluntary basis. That's not extortion, by definition.
What is unlawful, at least in my enlightened jurisdiction, is abusing market power to mislead the consumer, and even more so obliging other parties to do so.
Have you ever heard of anybody releasing a wildly successful app and it not being in the Apple app store?
Are you aware that there are many many many more stores like Walmart than there are stores like the Apple app store?
Tell that to all of the low end TV manufacturers, game systems (see Sega), toy manufacturers, and back in the day musicians who went out of their way to create an edited version just for Walmart.
Target? Best Buy? Costco? Amazon???
And the list doesn't end there - even Khol's sells toys - https://www.kohls.com/catalog/toys.jsp?CN=Department:Toys&se...
Try harder.
Best Buy sells electronic games but there is far more to toys than that.
B&N, Target, Costco, IKEA, and a number of others on the list do, in fact, sell toys in their brick and mortar stores.
The case here is driven mostly by Spotify who claim (my paraphrasing) they cannot benefit Apple customers equaly because of Apple restrictive practices and fee model.
You may not have purchased a Apple device with intention to use with Spotify, but others may.
(Now extrapolate the Spotify story to any appmaker who wish to sell to Apple customers)
The better question is why hasn’t Spotify made a decent watch app that can stream directly to it and download music for off line use? Apple added the ability last year.
How much of a cut does Spotify take from musicians to be on its platform?
The problem is: all of these big techs want to be a platform, and all of them sell (to their investors) the idea that their platform will be very profitable precisely because it will lock the participants inside a ecosystem hard to escape from.
Apple wasn't always in this business.
Spotify also wants to be a “platform”. The creators get a far smaller percentage and they are locking up “podcasts” behind their “walled garden”
> And Spotify may well be target of investigation one day. They are also in the monopolistic platform business model.
There are plenty of 3rd party app stores for the iPhone/iPad that anyone can access with out jailbreaking, Ignition (https://ignition.fun), TuTuApp (https://tutuapp-app.org), TweakBox (https://www.tweakboxapp.com), I'm probably missing more but they do exist. But they're sketchy and ad filled. They do how ever allow anyone to install semi-untethered jailbreaking software like Unc0ver and Electra.
That being said Apple taking 30% cut in revenue is way too much in my view and the way it's set up could be better.
> Apple is using its monopoly to hold all of us hostage
> Apple’s iOS controls 25% of the global smartphone market (the other 75%, is largely controlled by Google’s Android). This means that for over a billion people (particularly in the US where their market share approaches 50%), the only way to install apps is through the App Store. This gives Apple enormous influence over the way software is created and consumed around the world.
25% is indeed "enormous influence" but it's not a monopoly. It feeling like one isn't enough. The telcos in the States seem like a comparable example. There are three major players, so it's roughly 33% control for each (differs per region I'm sure).
With ISPs, it feels even worse. In most areas you can't even choose another provider with the same technology type (if you want fiber in my area, it's only Verizon. If you want cable, it's only Spectrum; DSL, AT&T; etc). But the rationale is, it's still internet at the end of the day, so I can technically choose.
So it’s more like a 70% share, in practice.
It’s also not unusual for companies to make deals with third parties to include their technology and software in their products, often as optional chargeable extras. That’s all the App Store is, it’s a way to add optional features to your phone, offered by the phone manufacturer. There is nothing illegal or abusive about this.
What’s the alternative. Are you going to mandate what features Apple, or any manufacturer of devices with embedded software, can or cannot implement? Are you going to mandate by law specific features for side loading that all manufacturers have to implement in all devices containing software? What features, who gets to specify them, how will this be enforced?
So now we’re going to have governments design the software in our phones, enshrined in law?
Finally, how does this serve my interests as an iPhone user or developer? Is fragmented app stores going to make it easier to find software, make it easier for developers to connect with customers and increase software revenues? I don’t see it.
Android has had tons of app stores over the years, the public converged on the Play Store because they want to go to one place to get apps and have one company to deal with. Users like consolidation, it serves their needs.
All this does not mean I’m against any regulation. I thing there’s a reasonable case for oversight of these things and a dialogue between law makers and tech companies about how they manage their products and customer relations. That’s fine, but chopping up the market and products arbitrarily does not serve the public interest.
That would be theft. I am honestly amazed that people are still in favor of gross government overreach in the era of Trump.
The pre-edited version of the original post asked the ludicrous question "So now we’re going to have governments design the software in our phones", so he got a ludicrous answer in kind. But in theory, if Apple's control of the App Store platform constitutes a monopoly, it would not be gross government overreach to pursue antitrust, as it has done historically, even if it has been unfashionable in recent decades.
But it's not a monopoly. The vast majority of the "app store" ecosystem is the Play Store. Apple's "App Store" is a minority player.
Otherwise you could arbitrarily divide any platform recursively until something is a monopoly in need of getting regulated.
Because the platform only exists because somebody created it, somebody specific not some consortium.
I don't want my iPhone OS to be created by a consortium, I want it to be run by Apple...
If that consortium is so great, why don’t they just make their own product. Let the public decide what they want.
I will say it's embarrassing that we've allowed one company's products to become such a status symbol that there is no alternative to the insecure masses, but such is the present world.
Then again, perhaps competition itself is obsolete, and we should just get on to centralized socialism already.
Should we coerce Microsoft into porting the Win32 development stack and tooling to OSX and Linux? It doesn’t make any sense. If you don’t want to use their products, don’t.
Well, it has been done for Microsoft, it could be done for Apple: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrowserChoice.eu
(I'm just stating a fact, not judging whether that is a good or a bad idea.)
In fact, yes. Just like we mandate cars have seat belts and third brake lights, airliners have emergency exits, automobile fuel contains no lead or added ethanol, houses use electrical wires per code, and so forth.
Government can simply mandate a maximum fee (like credit card interchange fee regulation in the last decade), or force the system to allow sideloading (like busting the AT&T attached device monopoly in the 70s), etc.
I’ll accept the comparison to credit card fees though. As I said I’m not against all oversight of any kind. I just don’t think the 30% is all that high.
I guess this would be great, if it were true. There are over two million competing apps in the market [1], and the vast majority are priced ridiculously competitively at less than a dollar each [2]. That's the average cost, not the median, which would be significantly lower.
I'm sure proton isn't happy about this, but considering the ridiculously high salaries app developers are able to command [3] but the market doesn't seem to agree with their assessment.
Now, this may be more true about app companies, but the numbers there tell a different story. Based on this analysis [4], the thing killing them isn't the developer fees, its that its ridiculously hard to make any sort of living if your only product is a phone app. The majority of apps simply make no money at all. Adding 30% to 0 doesn't do much for anyone.
[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/263795/number-of-availab...
[2]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/267346/average-apple-app...
[3]: https://www.businessofapps.com/app-developers/research/ios-a...
[4]: https://medium.com/@sm_app_intel/a-bunch-of-average-app-reve...
I personally don't like how Apple conducts their business so I just don't use Apple products and that's that.
If apps being more expensive is really the only problem then it seems like the problem fixes itself.
You're assuming efficient markets. The App Store is a monopoly, i.e. the opposite of an efficient market. (Well, it's more nuanced, all markets are somewhere between efficient and monopolistic.)
If you think I'm overblowing things, try finding Signal in China's AppStore.
There were other apps e.g. Podcast ones that used it.
And then kicked up a fuss when Apple said no.
When actual APIs were released Spotify never bothered to implement them for quite some time.
Suppose Apple standardizes jailbreaking: say they allow you to turn on a switch that creates a sandbox on your device for you to do whatever you want. Your device would then be running freestyle without warranty, fair enough for me as a first mockup. What's going to happen next is a handful of illiterate or unaccountable users will deface Apple's reputation by bombarding news sites with their misfortune. Apple would be cancelled overnight. I'm barely exaggerating.
Now I guess some EU negotiations could help to have some in-app purchases without fees (like buying a book in the Kindle app), avoid getting their app rejected for a shady reason (because rules can be changed whenever Apple sees fit) and, above all, allow me to set my morning alarm to some radio app (this one is ridiculous). The tragedy is that no "developers union" could ever succeed at this.
The last issue, about supporting authoritarian regimes, is probably the most difficult to solve. This is politics, there are no companies or governments that can have it all every time. China is a huge market: you cannot hope staying in business if you try to impose all your rules everywhere. That's the exact same idea behind having the EU make a stand on the single store issues. Also, the most intolerant wins [1].
[1] https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
Many Android phones already allow you to gain access to root or to replace the OS that the device ships with (and even more of them allow for indiscriminate sideloading, even without rooting). Has Android's reputation been "defaced" over this opportunity for users to run custom software on their devices?
But indeed "reputation" is more about marketing and at the end of the day the only thing that matters is the margin they can extract from aftermarket sales. As the recent antitrust inquiry shows, we were short of having 40% fee on app store sales.
https://twitter.com/HouseJudiciary/status/128856728139671142...
I think 30% made sense back then when the platform was tiptoeing. Now it may look as an abuse of dominant position, the classical shareholders vs workers game. I wonder how the appstore operating costs and profit have evolved over time.
Claiming that Apple has a "monopoly" on app sales on its own devices might be technically true but is not a meaningful statement when there are plenty of alternatives to Apple devices on the market.
It is about as meaningful as claiming a gas station has a "monopoly" on gas sales in a three block radius, or that a bar has a "monopoly" on cocktail sales in its own building, or that I have a "monopoly" on lemonade sales on my front lawn.
If you have to apply an arbitrary constraint to eliminate the consideration of meaningful alternatives that the consumer has access to, then you're not dealing with an actual monopoly.
Generally in Europe the market share threshold for monopoly investigations is 25% - Apple's market-share for mobile app sales is well above that threshold.
> The Commission considers that low market shares are generally a good proxy for the absence of substantial market power. The Commission's experience suggests that dominance is not likely if the undertaking's market share is below 40 % in the relevant market. [1]
Historically the European Commission's antitrust cases against tech giants have largely been against companies with overwhelming market share:
European Commission vs Google: 90% market share in search [2]
European Commission vs Intel: 70% market share in x86 CPUs [3]
European Commission vs Qualcomm: 90% market share in LTE chipsets [4]
Apple's 25% is nowhere near the same level and I expect the Commission's investigation will conclude that they do not, in fact, have a monopoly in the EU.
[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A...
[2] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_17_...
[3] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_09_...
[4] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_18_...
Natural (and legal) monopolies exist and are regulated so that there's a perceived net benefit to society for having them. The EU will investigate is (to Europeans) Apple's monopoly is net beneficial to them.
And I imply to agree with labeling Apple a monopoly precisely because, unlike the gas station on your example, a iPhone user cannot drive 3 miles to buy Spotify without having to pay Apple's 30% fee.
Is Apple obliged to make their phones available to other app stores? No. But not doing so AND profiting from 30% AND having a large marketshare is precisely why the EU is investigating them for abusive monopolistic behaviour.
They can choose a non-Apple phone. There is an alternative product on the market.
If Apple is forced to allow other app stores etc, shouldn't MS, Sony and Nintendo be forced to open their platforms as well?
And I can see already that there will be people jumping out of the woods with the classic argument: "The devs are free to leave the App store" You try to make a business and the first decision you make is that you abandon half of your potential marketshare (iOS is over 50% in the U.S.)
Break it up, and then you may hear people complain about how the mobile app marketplace is too fragmented (similar to how video streaming currently is).
Yes Apple is, there is no alternative to the App Store on an iPhone.
Part of my confidence in the iOS app store is the fact that Apple controls it so strongly. If they were forced to allow third party apps I doubt I would install any. My phone is too critical a part of my life to risk it.
Quite honestly, the software lockout business model has been deserving of government scrutiny ever since Nintendo put a lockout chip in the NES. If you own a device you should be able to run any software you want on it.
If I want iOS users to use my app, where can I publish it besides the App Store?
I like the Android implementation, allow users to install third-party apps but make them manually enable the feature, complete with warnings. Users don't have to enable the feature if they want App Store curation, but the option is there.
What company would ever allow that ?
With appropriate APIs, web apps can reach into devices and leverage GPU and CPU compute, multiple threads, microphone, camera, on-device storage, and more.
HTML and canvas don't have to be the only UI primitives available.
Both Google and Apple should be forced to fund the W3C and/or Mozilla in leading development of a cross-platform native experience. Other companies such as Microsoft and Amazon should join as stakeholders.
Yes, they should be forced to do it.
Edit: Downvotes already? What's wrong with wanting an open platform? Why do we have to expend effort developing for three different tech stacks (Android, iOS, web) when one is superior and wastes less human capital?
Edit 2: Wow, y'all really don't like this. My other suggestion is that we break up Apple and Google into separate companies so they're divested of their app marketplace from their hardware ecosystem/ad tech funnels. I think letting them work together on an open platform is less destructive and puts the world in a better place, but honestly if they can't do this then they should be broken up.
My representative, Lucy McBath, did a great job grilling the tech execs this week, and I continue to support her in breaking apart these unfair monopolies.
Edit 3: If you believe Apple is entitled to reap 30% from controlled access to their generic compute device, then you also should favor cable and internet service providers charging whatever they want for access to their pipes. It's the same thing. How many of you want Comcast to be able to charge you for your Netflix usage?
Nevermind the fact that this doesn't solve monopoly of distribution.
If you don't like "bolted on hacks" you'd like Web APIs and HTML as an application development platform even less...
You're taking a very narrow point of view.
The web is the last free thing we have that keeps us from being eternally bound to rent seekers. You shouldn't attack it. You should be grateful for it.
It's because of things like the web and open source we have an incredibly vibrant industry where it's easy to get started from nothing. In the limit, if Apple and Google expressed complete and total control, we'd all just be employees and own none of it.
On the contrary, ever since the web got hot, all we've had is rent seekers...
Everything is now a SaaS, closed code behind closed servers, and on the web everything major people would want to use (from Gmail to Basecamp, and from Notion to Slack), is either ad-supported (yuck) or requires a paid subscription.
I'd rather have the old native apps of yore: mine, forever after I paid for them (plus a freeware ecosystem, plus shareware, plus FOSS).
Microsoft and Amazon are also seen in these processes, though not as often and their buy in is less important since neither develop their own browser at this point.
Thank god for that. It's why mobile computing in 2020 isn't just Electron apps, like the desktop increasingly becomes...
Private entities shouldn't be forced into doing anything on a whim. You can arguably stop them from doing some things, but there is no reasonable basis for compelling companies to do things as you are saying.
> Downvotes already? What's wrong with wanting an open platform?
The downvotes is because what you suggest is wholly antithetical to every "open" movement in history. You don't get to tell people what to do simply because you want it to be that way. That's tyranny.
> I think letting them work together on an open platform is less destructive and puts the world in a better place
Again with this whole thing. You don't get to enact whatever policies you want because you think it would be nice. People have rights.
It's not a whim. They're being investigated by the EU and US Congress for being monopolies and suffocating smaller players. They're sucking all of the air out of the environment, making it incredibly difficult to gain traction on your own.
Don't trust me? Ask DHH.
> You can arguably stop them from doing some things, but there is no reasonable basis for compelling companies to do things as you are saying.
The government can absolutely tell them what to do. Apple wouldn't be where they are today if the US Government hadn't intervened against Microsoft and forced them to pay Apple.
Apple exists because of antitrust and the DOJ.
> You don't get to tell people what to do simply because you want it to be that way. That's tyranny.
I'm glad the tyrannical government put the FDA in place. And the FAA. Can you imagine if those industries could act however they wanted?
> People have rights.
Companies aren't people. Despite Citizen's United.
Saying stuff like "Google and Apple should be forced to fund the W3C and/or Mozilla" is absolutely a whim. This would be an absurd government overreach.
> They're sucking all of the air out of the environment, making it incredibly difficult to gain traction on your own.
You can absolutely succeed today without Apple. Apple is a minority player in the mobile device segment.
Perhaps Apple is more profitable for developers. But they are not a monopoly in this space yet and do not warrant anti-trust.
> Apple wouldn't be where they are today if the US Government hadn't intervened against Microsoft and forced them to pay Apple.
Microsoft, on the other hand, was a monopoly (and still is, in many ways).
> Can you imagine if those industries could act however they wanted?
Can you imagine what will happen if we keep giving the government more and more power to do what they want? See: Australia's government forcing encryption backdoors into every service.
Giving the government more and more power over companies that don't yet even constitute a monopoly is a recipe for disaster.
> Companies aren't people.
And yet companies are property, private entities, etc. Just because companies aren't people doesn't mean they are toys for the government to manipulate and control in any way they want under the guise of "antitrust regulation."